How can I speed up a conversion

Question

I’d like to know how to build a fast Paratext machine, specifically for conversions. Is processor speed key? How many cores will Paratext use? IfI’m doing the conversion using Paratext 8 is the answer different?

This question is prompted by a recent conversion I did it took five days to complete. I tried it first in 9.2 and the conversion failed at about version 13,000. I decided to try it again but this time using Paratext eight. The conversion completed, but after five days. The total number versions was approximately 28,500. I was using a dell 7550 precision workstation with 16 GB RAM and a core seven processor.

Answer 1

My guess would be disk I/O followed by single threaded CPU performance are the key things.

Instead of getting a fast nvme drive, you could try creating a ram disk, to put your projects on.

If you don’t want to go the ram drive route then the process is lots of small file writes, so I’d guess some thing like intel optane would be the best for that.

Answer 2

Thanks hindlemail for the reply. Very helpful. I have been asked to specify an AWS virtual machine to only be used for occasional conversions. Trying to figure out how to make that process as fast as possible without being too expensive.